The way I envision communism working is that the basic unit of independent organization is a commune. A commune could be the size of a city if very well designed (see The Venus Project), but it can succeed with very little design if it's small (like, a house with 10-20 bedrooms) granted there's a strong culture surrounding it.

A commune is not forced to let an outsider enter their grounds, nor to let any person eat their food. They are free, as a group, to tell someone to fuck off. That person then has the freedom to either A) find a different commune to join, or B) grow and harvest their own food. Since private property is abolished under communism, there is plenty of land to attempt that on.

In capitalism, there is nowhere to run, not even to the woods, because someone owns the woods and the police force will throw you out of it. It's illegal to be homeless. You can die by refusing to engage in this system of subversion, trading your valuable time for someone else's profit. In communism a person can die for being a horrible person that literally no one feels pity for and is simultaneously too inept at harvesting their own food. I feel like you'd have to fuck up bad to get to that point, because often at least one person will empathize and feel pity.

When Libreboot is installed on supported hardware, it completely removes the data from the Intel ME chip (as in, it becomes 0's in binary) and the BIOS overrides all calls to it. It truly does eliminate Intel ME.

This is not only idiotic, it shows that you've done no reading on the subject whatsoever, otherwise you may be aware of the prevailing arguments on either side and be able to argue them. The argument that a cow and a head of lettuce are the same would be ridiculed by even our most vehement opponents.

A group 20 students are playing kickball. A group of 3 teachers and 1 student representative determine the rules that the students play by. There is a mutual understanding that these 4 individuals must come to consensus about the rules being played. Each is respected, and expected to make a good faith attempt to compromise.

One of the teachers suggests that the district staff should have the ability to intervene in the game at any point and take the ball away from the students. The district staff thinks that kickball is bad morale, so they'll probably do this often. One other teacher agrees, and the third teacher has neutral silence. The student representative vehemently opposes this new rule, but realizing she's outnumbered, makes a good faith effort to compromise by drafting a clever solution that retains the rights of the students but still gives appeals to the district staff's desire to see less kickball playing. The teachers do not make a good faith effort to reciprocate, and break the social contract they went into the agreement with. The teachers have access to the school kickball website, so they update the rules on the website without the permission of the student representative and say "sorry, it didn't work out."

This is a violation of trust. Once the social contract has been broken, and certain members of the team have demonstrated their dominance and hierarchy, there is little that can be done to recover. Fortunately, the student representative reflects the wants of the masses, so if the masses can become organized they could meaningfully overthrow the teacher's team. All that would require is making their own team, that represents the views of only the kickball players, and abide by those instead. When people try to kick them off the field, they fight for it.

Are the chances slim we'll manage to mobilize people in this way? Maybe. But as tech issues become more and more tangible to normal people, we may just begin to see local direct action happening where people are getting off of their chair and holding a sign.

I think this sets a precedent that the W3C doesn't really care what the EFF thinks. It would be foolish for them to continue having a person sit in that chair while being continually walked all over. Time is better spent at this point trying to figure out how to overthrow them.

I said her action was pathetic, not that she was pathetic. She has done a lot of great things in her life. If you read me post, I mentioned those things. Why won't you accept that harming cows through dairy is wrong?

Jane Goodall has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since 1994. I don't know how much you know about animal rights orgs, but these people are no strangers to veganism. Have you been to an animal rights conference?

I'm not even sure it was ineffective. Without using strong language, people will keep going on their merry way believing that it's a personal choice to harm animals. Yeah no one probably went vegan from it, it probably made a few people mad, but it got their attention. I think being direct and speaking the truth is critical to achieving animal liberation.

I actually did recognize her for the incredible work she's done. I also criticized the fact that she has no excuse not to ditch dairy. Guess what? These are not mutually exclusive.

I'm always shocked at how many speciesist vegans I meet, and how people are so quick to say "haha not all vegans are bad!" instead of standing up for the animals. "How exactly did you think that was going to work out?" What's your point? I should be punished for saying that dairy is wrong?

Thanks for answering! I consider Dr. Goodall a hero of mine, so I have to say that answer is a bit disappointing...

Given what she knows about animal intelligence and their ability to lead complex emotional lives, I'm very curious to hear how she justifies contributing to the mass abuse of animals like cows. Clearly she has already crossed the "but I love bacon" hump to become vegetarian, so I'm optimistic that she could still make the change! Keep us updated?

-399 points

Haha, I think people just get exhausted by the same bad arguments being repeated. I mean, we've reached the point where the 60 most common arguments for animal exploitation and their respective counterarguments have been compiled into a website that anyone can click around and read, but people are so unwilling to even consider it or give it the time of day. All the while, imagine walking down the street every day and people are at resturaunts eating cooked dogs and cats, and all you can think about is your dog that you cuddle with at home... unable to comprehend the violence all around you and constantly upset that people are so cruel. That's how many vegans feel when people are eating cows, chickens, and pigs. I get accused of having a superiority complex or the moral high ground all the time, but really I just think killing animals is wrong when we don't have to. It actually sucks to be vegan because it sucks to care so much, but it's the right thing to do. Anyway, I hope you can imagine why vegans become so frustrated sometimes.